This specification relates to providing content over a network.
The Internet enables access to a wide variety of content, e.g., video and/or audio files, web pages for particular subjects, news articles, etc. Such access to these content items likewise enables opportunities for serving additional content items with the content. For example, advertisements can be provided with search results in response to a search query provided by a user, or provided for web pages of third party online publishers that have content related to the advertisement.
Users typically access content over a multiple different services and devices. For example, users may access content on a particular device by use of different applications and through user devices of different device types. Examples of different applications are browsers, games, and specialized applications, commonly referred to as “apps.” Examples of different device types are notebook computers, tablet computers, mobile device computers, desktop computers, and embedded computers such as computers in gaming consoles and televisions.
The content items that are provided to a particular user across multiple platforms often are selected without taking into account content provided among the different platforms associated with a particular user. For example, a user may execute a search and see advertisement related to that search. The user may then play a game on a smartphone and see completely different advertisements that may be somewhat related to the game they are playing, but completely unrelated to the advertisement that were provided during the search. Thereafter, the user may watch a television program and again see advertisements that are completely unrelated to the advertisement the user viewed in the game environment and the search environment. The disparate selection processes of the advertisements results in relatively unrelated advertisements being provided to a user across different devices. This, in turn, reduces the impact of the advertisements on the user.